ARMED FORCES: Birdbrained

When it comes to writing manuals, the U.S. Air Force is very good at flying airplanes and setting off missiles. That is not to say that the Air Force does not try. It supports a stable of authors so large and imaginative that it also needs a squadron of printers—the 2220th Printing Squadron at Langley Air Base, Va.—to keep up with them. Off its fecund presses roll official booklets on insurance, on citizenship, on adoption. There is one Air Force manual tersely titled "Plumbing," another on "Planting and Maintenance of Trees, Shrubs and Vines," and one on "Recreational and Social Programs for Children of Air Force Families." There is also a manual that tells the manual writers how to write other manuals, and still another manual telling how to distribute all the manuals.

A few manuals also talk about flying.

Among the 500-odd manuals in current circulation, 18 cover flight training, 22 technical training.

Bomb on the Church. Last week one of the Air Force manuals flipped open into a full-blown flap. It was Student Text NR. 45-0050, INCR.V, Vol. 7, a 250-page guide for reserve noncoms, from the manual writing section (19 civilians, six noncoms) at the Air Force's Lackland Military Training Center in San Antonio.

Subject: "Individual and Group Defense" —in particular, defense against Communist subversives.